Norris Trophy voting: 78-present

In an effort to get a little perspective on some modern defensemen, I've crunched some numbers from the NHL Awards and All-Star voting thread and come up with an alphabetical list of all defensemen from 78 to present who finished "high" in the Norris trophy voting. I wanted to construct something resembling a top-10 list by season based on Norris voting, but changes in voting format (beginning in 1995) and other concerns led me to scrap that goal and come up with a new standard. Here it is:

The list contains all defensemen from 78 to present who achieved at least one first place vote or two top-3 votes in any given year. The reasoning for this standard follows:

- I wanted something approximating a measure of top-10 finishes by year, and wasn't terribly interested in a top-20. With the exception of the 80-81 outlier (in which defensemen down to 19th place met the standard) and 82-83 (in which only the top-5 is available), the standard I use yields results down as low as 13th in a few seasons and as shallow as 6th in others, but yields something close to a top-10 for most seasons.

- I wanted to weed out homer votes by local sportswriters. Including defensemen who received only a single 3rd place vote in the rankings, for example, would likely skew the results badly in favor of players from large markets.

- the ordering of defensemen who each received only one vote could cause great distortions for what I think are obvious reasons. I don't want to assign number values to players' relative performance based on the opinion of just one sportswriter in one year.

- the introduction of 4th and 5th place Norris voting in 95-96 made it impossible to reconcile the periods before and after that time by comparing raw points. Inclusion of 4th and 5th place voting in the standard is also impossible because those votes did not exist before 95-96.

One more note: I have not included breakdowns for modern defensemen drafted in the first two rounds of ATD #9. These players have rather static values, and aren't of huge interest to me, though I'd welcome an addition to these stats if someone feels like breaking down all of the top-10 finishes by guys like Chelios, MacInnis, Leetch, Lidstrom, et al. Ok, here's the data, sorted alphabetically by player name and chronologically by year:

My initial impressions from the data are that it makes Gonchar look shockingly good and Carlyle shockingly bad, although the fact that Carlyle wasn't particularly special outside of his Norris season was something I already knew. Gonchar's six top-10 Norris appearances does surprise me a bit, though. Other impressions:

- Brad McCrimmon doesn't make a lot of appearances among the Norris leaders, which also does not surprise me.

- Adam Foote makes zero appearances on this list. I didn't forget him; he simply never met the standard. Considering how much love defensive defensemen actually get in the Norris voting, one has to wonder why the sportswriters never considered Foote worthy of more than a single top-3 vote (he did get a single 3rd place vote in 98-99 and again in 02-03).

- the list is a good reminder of why Phil Housley and Larry Murphy get drafted relatively high.

- the fact that, in addition to his Norris and all-star years, Rod Langway also has two 5th place Norris finishes (essentially 3rd-team all-star years) and two other years on the edge of the top-10 may do something to resuscitate his draft stock.

- the numbers remind us that Ken Morrow was every bit as un-special as I recall him being and that Chris Pronger is, actually, you know...really good.

- I am reminded of just how short Scott Niedermayer's peak really was and of the strange gap between his first really good season and his Norris Trophy six years later.

As I said, I didn't do a breakdown for players taken in the top 2 rounds because it didn't seem necessary. If you want to break down Stevens' Norris finishes using my metric and add to the data, please do.

Great work, Sturm. I was planning on doing the same type of analysis with the Norris votes, you beat me to it.

I think you did the right thing by limiting this to years where players received at least one first place vote or two top-3 votes. It's obvious that in many years, all of the players outside of the top 5-10 simply received one or two votes (out of 50-100 potential voters). There's no point in pretending that a player with a single 4th place vote is definitely superior to a player that received a single 5th place vote (or didn't receive any votes at all).

A few quick observations. Randy Carlyle's poor voting record supports my long-held opinion that he's the worst Norris winner ever. Zubov's voting record is pretty interesting- it supports the general consensus that he's been a very good defenseman for a long time, but he's only really had a few elite seasons. Finally, I think that Phaneuf has sky-high potential but I'm very surprised by his three straight top-eight finishes. Maybe I should watch more Flames games.

There's one more Norris metric I'd like to work on: Norris shares. It's based on the Vezina shares Dr. No has on his website. Basically, you compare voting points a player has, to the total available votes. This way, Bobby Orr's unanimous 1970 Norris is worth more than, say, Doug Wilson getting ~58% of available points.

Great work, Sturm. I was planning on doing the same type of analysis with the Norris votes, you beat me to it.

I think you did the right thing by limiting this to years where players received at least one first place vote or two top-3 votes. It's obvious that in many years, all of the players outside of the top 5-10 simply received one or two votes (out of 50-100 potential voters). There's no point in pretending that a player with a single 4th place vote is definitely superior to a player that received a single 5th place vote (or didn't receive any votes at all).

A few quick observations. Randy Carlyle's poor voting record supports my long-held opinion that he's the worst Norris winner ever. Zubov's voting record is pretty interesting- it supports the general consensus that he's been a very good defenseman for a long time, but he's only really had a few elite seasons. Finally, I think that Phaneuf has sky-high potential but I'm very surprised by his three straight top-eight finishes. Maybe I should watch more Flames games.

There's one more Norris metric I'd like to work on: Norris shares. It's based on the Vezina shares Dr. No has on his website. Basically, you compare voting points a player has, to the total available votes. This way, Bobby Orr's unanimous 1970 Norris is worth more than, say, Doug Wilson getting ~58% of available points.

That's something I could work on for you if you like. I might need a little help knowing the maximum points possible for some seasons but overall I could crank this out in under a month for you.

Great work, Sturm. I was planning on doing the same type of analysis with the Norris votes, you beat me to it.

I think you did the right thing by limiting this to years where players received at least one first place vote or two top-3 votes. It's obvious that in many years, all of the players outside of the top 5-10 simply received one or two votes (out of 50-100 potential voters). There's no point in pretending that a player with a single 4th place vote is definitely superior to a player that received a single 5th place vote (or didn't receive any votes at all).

A few quick observations. Randy Carlyle's poor voting record supports my long-held opinion that he's the worst Norris winner ever. Zubov's voting record is pretty interesting- it supports the general consensus that he's been a very good defenseman for a long time, but he's only really had a few elite seasons. Finally, I think that Phaneuf has sky-high potential but I'm very surprised by his three straight top-eight finishes. Maybe I should watch more Flames games.

There's one more Norris metric I'd like to work on: Norris shares. It's based on the Vezina shares Dr. No has on his website. Basically, you compare voting points a player has, to the total available votes. This way, Bobby Orr's unanimous 1970 Norris is worth more than, say, Doug Wilson getting ~58% of available points.

Thanks, HO. The shares issue is something that I thought of while I was working on the project, but didn't have the energy for at the time. I think it would be rather illuminating, but what share shall we compare: overall votes, 1st place votes or possible points for a single player?

I think possible points is the best metric available, though it will not yield results that add up to a clean 100% across all players - only a comparison of 1st place votes yields that kind of clean data. Given that a shares metric will mostly only be relevant for analyzing the top performers in any given season, perhaps 1st place votes is the way to go. I dunno.

I'm a little surprised by Phaneuf's Norris voting record, as well, though maybe I shouldn't be. I must admit to a some surprise over the consistency shown in Rob Blake's Norris voting record, as well. I'm a guy who has criticized Blake in the past for his brain farts and inconsistency, and yet, viewed from this angle, Blake actually appears to have been quite a consistent performer over his peak years, and perhaps unfairly maligned. Ditto Pronger, whose ups and downs do play out in the voting, but who we're reminded has had a lot more up than down, especially when injuries are taken into account.

Each has the same amount of occurrences, the 5th, 9th and 11th cancel each other out. Leaving:
Langway: 1st, 1st, 3rd, 5th
Howe: 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 6th

Shouldn't need to say who that favours.

I think when rating Langway, many people forget he was getting Norris consideration when he played in Montreal.

A breakdown of Norris shares would further illuminate the comparison, though it should be noted that Langway beat Howe and Bourque by a pretty narrow margin in 1983. It's not often that 1st place Norris votes are that spread out across three players.

Note: I am adding a 7th place finish for Randy Carlyle in 84-85. I missed that he got three 3rd place votes in that season because the two players rated directly ahead of him each received a single 2nd place vote and thus didn't meet the standard of the metric.

I consider three 3rd place votes considerably more evidence of a good season than a single 2nd place vote, which, given the performances of the top defensemen that season, was almost surely the result of a single homer sportswriter's poor judgment. So I am adding a 7th place finish in Carlyle's column, consistent with the metric.

A breakdown of Norris shares would further illuminate the comparison, though it should be noted that Langway beat Howe and Bourque by a pretty narrow margin in 1983. It's not often that 1st place Norris votes are that spread out across three players.

Fair enough, but, even if you take that year as a saw off, it's 1, 3, 5 vs 2, 2, 6.

This thread was originally started to exclude instances where a player received a single vote as it wasn't really evidence of much. Does the above list from dreakmur include or exclude those instances?

This thread was originally started to exclude instances where a player received a single vote as it wasn't really evidence of much. Does the above list from dreakmur include or exclude those instances?

It doesn't exlude anything - it's just the top-10s...

i just figured it's a good starting point to start going through and finding the singles and eliminate them.

1995:
Steve Duchesne 0 (0-0-0); Brian Leetch 0 (0-0-0)
---- don't think I put these two in the top-10 list, but they were listed in the voting records as top-10 without getting any votes...

I believe they voted on who the top-6 should be and then cast votes among those six. So unofficially, I think these two are counted because they were voted to this point, even if they didn't get any votes in the "finals".

I believe they voted on who the top-6 should be and then cast votes among those six. So unofficially, I think these two are counted because they were voted to this point, even if they didn't get any votes in the "finals".

They at least won their heats, so to speak.

Yeah, that was the lockout half-year, when East and West teams didn't play each other in the regular season. So I think that each conference voted separately, and there was a 2nd round of voting with only the leaders from each conference as candidates.

1995:
Steve Duchesne 0 (0-0-0); Brian Leetch 0 (0-0-0)
---- don't think I put these two in the top-10 list, but they were listed in the voting records as top-10 without getting any votes...

Quote:

Originally Posted by seventieslord

I believe they voted on who the top-6 should be and then cast votes among those six. So unofficially, I think these two are counted because they were voted to this point, even if they didn't get any votes in the "finals".

They at least won their heats, so to speak.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDevilMadeMe

Yeah, that was the lockout half-year, when East and West teams didn't play each other in the regular season. So I think that each conference voted separately, and there was a 2nd round of voting with only the leaders from each conference as candidates.

In 1995, the Norris and Vezina (don't recall if any others) were voted on a conference basis. Each conference voted only on their own conference. So "finalists" was an apropos term, if applied to the three top vote-getters from each conference. After the six had been selected, votes were cast among them league-wide. It's how you also end up with Trevor Kidd in the top six in Vezina voting; nobody in their right mind would be voting for him. I'm still stunned when looking at numbers from that year that Kidd beat both Mike Vernon and Chris Osgood (especially Osgood) in voting. Playing a lot of games doesn't make you a good goalie, and Kidd did absolutely nothing else. Straight sv% says Osgood-Moog-Hrudey should have been the list (Hasek-Thibault-Vanbiesbrouck in the East) with Hasek-Osgood-Thibault as the final list.